In Zaidi we trust - The Giants

6 - 4 on this home stand with two series wins and one split. One month in and one game under .500, will take it. No help from Snell but still doing okay.

Was watching Lee the other day, his batting approach is rather unique so I looked up his first 5 weeks of MLB stats.

He primarily bats lead off so you'd expect him to walk a lot... yet he doesn't: 7.2% BB/PA.

That said he doesn't strike out a tremendous amount either: 8.6% K/PA

His MLB OBP (.304) is tracking about 3/4ths of his KBO career (.407), which is worrying enough but his power has simply evaporated in MLB (.071 ISO, .317 SLG) compared to his .340/.407/.491/.898 KBO career line.

He's performing barely replacement level which is a tough swallow for an untradeable OF due to make >$20M/yr in the next 5 years.

You could also calm down about a guy adjusting to a league that’s notably more difficult than the one he came from *checks notes* just over a month into his MLB career

The Giants big offseason signings fWAR descending:

Hicks: 0.7
Chapman: 0.3
Lee: 0.2
Snell: 0.1
Soler: 0.0
Tom Murphy (?): -0.3
Ray: n/a

Totalling $354M spent for a cumulative 1.0 WAR.

For comparison, the Giants are paying Patrick Bailey $748k and getting 1.1 WAR from him.

It’s a month into the season

fyi I’m not going to shed a tear about Charles Johnson spending money on players rather than donating it to Christian extremist superpacs or whatever else he does with his fortune

Yeah no, seem to recall a survey of MLB GMs that rated Lee's contract the worst signing of the offseason. 😬

Checked his savant page and it was a sea of blue as expected.

...but I'm here for the optimism!

I don’t mean to be mean but who gives a fuck? It’s one month in.

Suggest you see an opticians if this is “a sea of blue”
https://i.postimg.cc/dtbm4H5X/IMG-0373.png

For comparison, the Giants are paying Patrick Bailey $748k and getting 1.1 WAR from him.

Well yeah, for all the chasing after free agents and losing and then making questionable panic signings the core problem with the Giants is an inability to identify and/or develop young hitters. Hard to buy your way out of mediocrity.

Giants haven’t developed an actual slugger type since ooooh Posey? Belt? That seems common for lots of teams around the league though. They develop pitching or hitters, but usually not both.

#CaptSaveAHoo 😂

(truly terrible joke, I am in transit back home and will address Lee's blurple statcast sometime later this week!(?) )

Sorry gyac, full plate atm, wish I possessed the bandwidth for daily content creation 😔

Pat the Bat & Andrew Baggarly both agree with me!

https://theathletic.com/5480930/2024/05/09/sf-giants-jung-hoo-lee-season-start/?source=user_shared_article

The league-average whiff rate on four-seam fastballs is 21.8 percent. Lee’s rate of 6.9 percent on four-seamers is the fourth lowest among 76 players who have been thrown at least 175 of them. More notably, Lee’s whiff rate on four-seamers at 95 mph or faster is just 3.1 percent. That’s the second-lowest rate among 207 major leaguers who have seen at least 40 such pitches, behind only Cleveland’s Steven Kwan (who hasn’t swung and missed at any of them).

Lee’s overall contact rate of 91.3 percent is the third best in the majors, trailing only Kwan and Luis Arraez, the two-time batting champ whom the San Diego Padres just acquired from Miami for four prospects. (One of those prospects, minor-league relief pitcher Woo Suk Go, is Lee’s brother-in-law.)

Lee’s batting average on all fastballs is .241. Based on the quality of contact, though, he should be hitting close to .300 on heaters.

All of this to say: high heat isn’t knocking the bat out of his hands. Which is important. Because he doesn’t walk much (which is partly a function of his high contact rate), his on-base skills are heavily reliant on his ability to hit for average.

The Giants just played 16 games in a row and went 6 - 10.

They are 1 - 5 against the Dodgers, so far, this year.

IL lost on this stretch:

Patrick Bailey x 2
Jung Hoo Lee
Michael Conforto
Tom Murphy
Nick Asmed
Austin Slater
Jorge Solar

Jorge Soler took on-field BP for the first time since going on the IL, but this happened: pic.twitter.com/cSHMjDoPom

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) May 14, 2024

Winning one game against the Dodgers was my 2024 WS Buster Hug. That's how low the expectations are for me

Tom Murphy being injured is like the weather changing - inevitable - but Jung Hoo Lee’s injury is really bad. Did they confirm he’ll miss the rest of the season yet?

Had the chance to go to a couple games this week, and yikes, this team is gonna get worse before they get better. Bleak days on the horizon, shades of 2017 vibez.

former KBO MVP Jung Hoo Lee probably won't play until this time next year, maybe later (he flew to Dr. Death aka Neil ElAttrache's office for an emergency appointment today). As forgettable as his season has been, he could be a dark horse when he returns as expectations will be incredibly low... he was contributing at the same level as all the promoted River Cats who are on the roster now.

here's a quicky I did on Lee's statcast, highlighting what I, Stephen Q. Shasta, personally think is important (and not) in terms of a $20M+/yr offensive centerpiece signing:

https://i.imgur.com/SN4jj4U.png

Heard a fan sitting next to me excited about Snell's dominant rehab start... so I looked it up: 46 pitches against a bunch of teenagers with .600 OPS in single A:

https://www.milb.com/gameday/ports-vs-giants/2024/05/12/756701/final/box

well you have to build his confidence back up

i didn't realize the river cats were a giants affiliate, i thought they were an a's affiliate. makes the a's deal even weirder

You’re right, they were an A’s affiliate until like 10 years ago, I’m not quite sure what happened there

Giants bought it and sold the Bakersfield team. Fisher I'm sure appreciated getting $ for his minor league team like the cheapskate short sighted loser that he is

Lee out for the year :-(

Yeah I expected that after Trevor Story’s injury. Terrible.

Jung Hoo Lee said the last month and a half has been the time of his life playing with the Giants. 😢

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) May 17, 2024

Was expecting that news. Goddammit can we have nice things again? Is this what we get for jackpotting three WS titles as crazy good luck underdogs?

The baseball gods only provided for :
- Zito to pitch the game of his life in the NLCS
- Matt Cain to absorb endless thankless innings in the early years, pitch a perfect game and be an unflappable postseason co-ace
- five years of Tim Lincecum before his body fell apart & his unreal 2012 postseason reliever pitching
- Jonathan Sanchez flashing bright for that one no hitter and winning the last game of the 2010 season
- Buster Posey
- the Brandons
- and ofc, the core four

They didn’t provide for Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Will the Thrill, Bonds etc to win anything, so they are probably like, eh you’ve tapped it for a while, spend it on something better than a young guy’s shoulder.

But yeah, it sucks. Torn labrum is a definite season-ender and they can’t fuck around with that.

I would add:
- Cody Ross 2 HR game vs "Fresh off a No Hitter" Roy Halladay (Sorry Doc!)
- Juan Uribe's only career opposite field HR being the NLCS game 6 winner
- Tim Lincecum 1st inning brain fart not leading to runs scored in 2010
- Ball bouncing off outfield wall in game 2 of the 2010 World Series back into play
- Vogelsong's 2012 post season run (and his overall 2nd stint performance for 2 years) - he was so absolutely clutch in every game he started, his performances were pivotal in each and every series, most overlooked "EYBS/baseball god magic" player of the whole run imho
- Morse's pinch hit 8th inning HR and Ishikawa's walk off HR in 2014 NLCS game 5 to win it
- Replay being in existence for the first season in 2014 when we needed it for that game 7 double play call
- Bum being Bum in game 7
- KC not scoring in the 9th on that hit and error in 2014 game 7
- The insanity of the comeback in Game 3 of the Wild Card series vs the Cubs (Gillespie triple ftw!)

I will agree a lot of that makes up for the 60's and late 80's teams along with the Bonds era. So much bad luck in '62 and 2002 with the Marlins and Mets gutting out weird wins over us. It was so sweet being the team that had that "magic"... it just felt like we had some spiritual momentum on our side.

- Craw grand slam in the ‘14 wild card game

Pablo Sandoval 3 home run game in 2012 World Series

I'm sad today but these posts were a great pick me up.

that five year run was special and we'll likely never sniff anything like it again in our lifetimes.

I wasn’t even there for it! And some teams have never been there.

- Tim Lincecum’s two very different no hitters.
- Bruce Bochy

Octobeard I only just saw your post!

Morse's pinch hit 8th inning HR and Ishikawa's walk off HR in 2014 NLCS game 5 to win it

Ishikawa reacted. He kept his front shoulder closed, whistled his bat through the zone, and felt the connection. There was no need to hope as he watched the ball shrink up into the stars, only the need to run. He knew he’d gotten enough of it, that at least the ball would hit the brick arcade and the winning run would score. When Ishikawa saw the ball clank off the green metal roof atop the right-field arcade, he let out a yell that nobody could hear but him. Morse’s decibel record in China Basin lasted all of one inning. The Giants won the pennant, and Ishikawa’s three-run home run clinched it in a 6–3 victory.

Lee's replacement Luis Matos had 5 RBIs tonight. Lee had tallied 8 over his seven week MLB career.

Who are these guys, tho it does help that it's the Rockies.

Luis Matos in his 26 at bats so far these two games. 10 hits, 4 runs, 2 home runs, 17 RBI, .385 Ave and 1.116 OPS with two home run robbing catches.

I'm a little off as it's 17 this year, not in these two games.

Remember where you were on the day Luis Matos drove in SIX runs in one game and 11 total in two games pic.twitter.com/YnnE5Qp0S2

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 18, 2024

Baggarly’s description of the latter remains some of my favourite baseball writing ever.

I've said it before, probably in this thread, but no lie, I watch Ishikawa's HR probably 3-4 times a year when I'm down.

I should have mentioned I was at game 2 of the 2010 WS in the left center bleachers and watched that crazy ball bounce off the fence about 30 feet in front of me. It was the most surreal fucking thing ever...

Pablo Sandoval 3 home run game in 2012 World Series

Justin Verlander's "WOW" is visualized in my head now. I wasn't at this game but was at Pedro's across the street and I recall standing ON THE BAR for the third home run, and I don't recall being the only one doing so. It was a madhouse of euphoria. We felt invincible! Just recalling all of this gives me shivers.

Watched the end of today's game. Matos and Ramos look GREAT and I am really really hoping our home growns can stay productive and give this team the heart beat it sorely needs.

that five year run was special and we'll likely never sniff anything like it again in our lifetimes.

Absolutely. I felt that at the time, and by 2014, especially with Bum ending things the way he did, appreciated the impossible magic of every single moment. We knew we were watching history in that moment in real time. I feel lucky to have just been so close to it, living in the city when it happened in my early 30's, the prime of my life. I have so so so many stories, memories, friendships and even relationships/flings that seemingly sprouted from that magical era and its many celebrations. A brick along the outside of the ballpark shares my grandfather's, father's and my name on it. Took my father to that 2010 WS game 2. After they won I kinda felt he could now die happy and at peace (he'd been a Giants fan since they moved to SF, has a ticket stub of the first game at Seal Stadium in the Mission). That run affected the city in a profoundly positive way and the team's personalities, quirks, eccentricities and underdog status seemingly perfectly mirrored the city at the time. As bleak as things might get for the team in the decades to come, I'll always have those memories of both the team and SF. I was around for the Niners in the 80's/90's and the Warriors dynasty but the Giants run was like nothing else. Usually dynasties dominate, define greatness. Feel unstoppable. But this was an improbable dynasty. A dynasty of upsets. A dynasty of surprises and magic moments. I can't think of an equivalent in any other sport.

I'm sad today but these posts were a great pick me up.

Hell yeah. Just writing this out has picked me up too. Such amazing times. Much love.

I hope to have a beer with you one day octobeard, such great posts.

I was sad about Jung Hoo Lee injury news and not my personal life on that particular day, just to be clear. But these Giants posts were magical. Thanks everyone!

I'm back down here in the OC but I moved to San Francisco in '95 and at that time could cate less about sports. Started watching Steve Young, at the end of his career, but it was Barry Bonds who changed everything. I started watching the Giants in 2000, was crushed in 2002 but 2003 was actually more heartbreaking. In the end it took me 11 years to get my championship. Then there were 3 in 5 years.

I would like that! LMK next time you're in the city. I always appreciate how regularly you post in this thread too.

Hopefully these guys can pick things up after finally winning 3 in a row and I'm sure JHL will come back with a vengeance next year.